1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a Massively Parallel Processor Array (MPPA) system and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for processing data in an MPPA system.
2. Description of the Related Art
An MPPA system is designed to manage a wireless communication modem using hundreds of simple processors integrated on a single chip in communication systems that require a large amount of data storage and complex data processing.
A picoChip is an example of the MPPA system. Each processor on the picoChip operates using a small local memory and the processors are synchronized with one another in a producer-consumer relationship. Specifically, the picoChip allocates only one simple task to each processor. In the picoChip, each next processor waits until a predecessor processor completes a given operation, though the tasks do not change dynamically between the processors. A multi-port switch matrix is installed in the form of a mesh as data bus channels between the processors. Since the switch matrix is fixed to a specific state by selecting a channel to be used between processors in a developmental stage and the processors are mapped to one another in a one-to-one correspondence, a constant time duration is always required for data transfer. As the number of processors increases in the picoChip, a bottleneck may occur at the data bus channels. Therefore, a plurality of data bus channels are installed between processors to achieve a wide bus bandwidth. However, even through the picoChip has a plurality of data bus channels between processors, only one data bus channel is eventually used between them, resulting in routing wire waste.
Another MPPA system is the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) developed jointly by IBM, Sony and Toshiba. The Cell BE system is commercialized as a heterogeneous multiprocessor system. In the Cell BE, one Power Processor Element (PPE) manages all application programs and a plurality of Synergetic Processor Elements (SPEs) specialized in data processing preserve a coherent page table in order to use the same virtual address for all threads created by processors. For protection of system stability and security, the SPEs copy data from a system memory to their local memories. Accordingly, a wide bus bandwidth is required. In addition, the Cell BE needs a complex device to maintain the coherency of virtual addresses and the complex device also requires a wide bus bandwidth.
As described above, an MPPA system such as the picoChip and the Cell BE generally requires a wide bus bandwidth. Accordingly, there exists a need to solve the wide bus bandwidth problem for processing of data in an MPPA system.